This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video GM: Appearances and Recognition; The Six Sense Spheres - Our World (1 of 5): The Eye and Sights. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by an unknown speaker at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
I’m really happy to be with you all this week. I’m down in Santa Barbara, about 300 miles south of Redwood City, and it doesn’t really make any difference where I am because this worldwide Sangha1 is always present here and now. Gil is teaching a retreat this week, and I’m really happy to be able to offer something in his absence. I hope it will complement the introduction he’s doing to how insight arises. Our practice prepares the mind through a deepening sensitivity to our lived experience, moment to moment, to allow these deep insights to arise.
On Friday, Gil spoke about how the arising of insight is a natural process, a deep seeing, and it happens when the obstacles to that deep, clear seeing have been left behind, have been cleared away. So for this week, I thought I would focus on some of the obstacles to clear seeing, where they arise, and how they get in our way.
Long before the time of the Buddha, there was a special kind of super-walking human, and an individual named Rohitasa2 was one of these. Hundreds or maybe thousands of years later, this same Rohitasa, after many intervening lifetimes in different forms, had been reborn as a deva3—a kind of god or angel or some kind of mythological being that exists in the text. He came to the Buddha and asked him if it was possible to reach the end of the world by walking, by traveling. The Buddha told him that it wasn’t possible. Rohitasa was really pleased to hear this because during that earlier super-walking life, he had walked, taking strides that apparently were a couple of thousand miles in length each, for the entire 100 years that he was alive, only taking time out for his obvious physical needs. And he had never reached the end of the world.
So he was glad it wasn’t possible. The Buddha then replied to Rohitasa, saying that though it is not possible to reach the end of the world by walking, in order to reach the end of suffering, it is necessary to reach the end of the world. And then he went on to say, “For it is in this fathom-long body with its perceptions and mind that I describe the world, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation.” Bhikkhu Bodhi4, the American monk who is such a prolific translator of many of the early teachings of the Buddha and a wonderful teacher, has called this maybe the most profound proposition in the history of human thought. That’s pretty high praise.
In this story, of course, Rohitasa was asking about how to reach the end of the outer world, the physical earth. But the Buddha’s answer was about the world we experience. Some of us might not measure a full fathom—I’m a lot shorter than that, it’s about six feet—but no matter what size we are, our entire experience of the world lies within this body. This is where we practice. This is what we practice with. This is where our practice is realized, where insight arises.
This week, I’m going to offer some words about what the Buddha said makes up our world, our loka5. Loka in Pali6 is sometimes translated as cosmos, but I really prefer the word “world” because it’s simpler. It’s our world, how the world comes to us, how we know and experience it. So here, within these bodies, is where we develop insight, and also where the obstacles to the deep seeing of insight arise.
To begin, let’s meditate. I’ll invite a little bit of exploration during the meditation into what makes up our world.
If you’d like to take your comfortable meditation posture, a posture that expresses both alertness and ease. We want to be awake to our experience, but in a relaxed, peaceful way. Invite ease into any areas where there’s tension. Maybe do a brief body scan, just beginning with the top of the head, the forehead, and the brow area. Notice any kind of tightness or straining and let it ease as much as possible. The cheeks and jaw, the throat, and the tops of the shoulders, the trapezius muscles—just see if you can let those ease up.
Let the breath be full. The chest can be open, not held tightly. The belly can be soft. The thighs and calves, just relaxed. Feel yourself sitting or lying, whatever posture you’re in, and feel the weight of the body being supported by whatever is under you—the earth, foundationally, fundamentally.
Maybe take a little time to connect with your breathing, taking a few deep breaths just to help connect to what’s happening in this present moment and to settle a little bit. Closing your eyes, just sensing into what can be sensed with your eyes closed. What’s actually happening? The breath in the body, whatever is happening in the mind, other sensations, hearing.
If there are sounds where you are, notice what is heard and the knowing of what is heard. Knowing is a mental function, and sensing happens at the place where something is sensed. When we hear a sound, where is it heard? Sounds are sensed at the ear door, but it’s the mind that knows that something has been heard, that hearing has occurred. The mind recognizes it, identifies it, and usually, maybe reacts to it.
The sensations in the body, the sensations of breathing, all the sensations from the tip of the nose all the way down into the lungs, the depth of the lungs, the movements of the belly—all those sensations are sensed where they occur. The sensing takes place there, but the knowing of the sensation is in the mind. The mind can simply know, and it can also complicate that simple sense contact with all kinds of activity and reactivity.
I want to invite you to stay with what is sensed as much as possible, letting mental activity settle, maybe ignoring it if it arises, turning attention back to the simple sensations of breathing or hearing or other sensations in the body. Doing that, staying with what’s simple, can be easeful. It can be peaceful, just sitting back and watching the flow of experience, knowing it, sensing it.
Whatever is happening in the body—sensations of breathing, other sensations, even mental activity—can it be known simply? Just sensed into, without complicating? Let go of the complication. Just sense and know.
This simplicity in the way we relate to our experience that I’m inviting, it can be a way of warming our hearts. I think when there is simplicity in our experience, there is more access to what is friendly and welcoming within us towards our own experience and towards others. Maybe we can turn that outward now with a wish that all beings enjoy a simple relationship to their lives, that they can have ease, that they might have peace in their hearts, might feel safe and protected, might be healthy, and one day might have the deep insight that leads to freedom of heart. May it be so.
Welcome again. For those who weren’t here at the beginning, this week I’m going to be talking about some of the things that get in the way of the clear seeing that leads to insight in our practice, in our dharma path.
Here’s that line from the Buddha that Bhikkhu Bodhi had such high praise for: “For it is in this fathom-long body with its perceptions and mind that I describe the world, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation.”
After the Buddha had given this pithy teaching on what constitutes the world, some other monks who had heard it asked Ānanda7, the Buddha’s dear cousin and attendant, to try to explicate what the Buddha meant because it’s a little bit enigmatic. Ānanda explained, “The world is that in the world by which one is a perceiver and conceiver of the world.” It’s kind of a convoluted sentence. So what is that by which we perceive and conceive the world?
What the teachings tell us is that it is the six sense spheres: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching (this tactile sense), and mental activity. The path to the end of suffering is found in exploring, getting to know, working with, and seeing the true operation of these six areas of experience, and gradually letting go of any clinging and craving that’s associated with them.
Often over the years, I’ve heard Gil say that in any one moment, there are only two things happening: there is what is happening, and there is how we relate to what is happening. What is happening is always happening in one of these six sense spheres. That’s all there is. And how we relate to what is happening through the mind is how we get caught, how we get obstructed, how we create dukkha8. It’s also how we get free.
Gil has begun this series on the insights that lead to the end of the world. Last week he spoke about different categories of insight that we develop as we practice. First, there are what he called personal insights: seeing into our habits, our habit patterns, noticing the way we do things, how we’ve come to be conditioned by our personal history. I think of those as psychological insights, and often we spend our first years of practice, maybe many years, with these being the primary kind of insights that we have. We develop more wisdom about our conditioning. We start loosening the attachments to our stories of blame and regret and self-judgment. We start to not take things quite so personally.
Then, as we have opened in that way to our conditioning, we become more ready for the deeper insights, the ones that apply to all of us, to all human beings. Gil introduced the insight we can have into what is sensed and what we make of it: nāma-rūpa9, or “appearances and recognition,” as he translates it. Name-and-form is the more literal translation. This is the beginning of wisdom developing in us: seeing the difference between what we experience through our senses and the mental activity that accompanies it, which I was trying to invite during the meditation.
Then the next day, he introduced conditionality, beginning to see how what we experience through the physical senses is conditioned by what’s present in the mind, and vice versa—how what comes to us through the senses gives rise to mental activity. Everything is conditioned in our lives, and we begin to see this river of conditions flowing that makes up our entire life, all the way from birth to death. When we begin to see that, we begin to see impermanence, inconstancy, anicca10. It’s continual; its inconstancy is constant. And because we see this flow as constant, we come to realize that nothing in our experience is stable, nothing is concrete, nothing is to be relied upon, including a sense of self. Gradually, as a result of this, we lose interest in clinging to what is continually slipping away. Then we become ripe for the deepest insights to arise, the insights into the three perceptions that Gil introduced on Friday.
To use Ānanda’s language, all the practices that lead to insight illuminate the way we perceive through our physical senses and conceive through our minds. Our perceptions condition the mental conceptions, and our mental conceptions condition how we perceive. There is this kind of feedback loop between those. Gradually, our practice illuminates what obstructs freedom and ease in that relationship and leads us in the direction of the end of suffering. The way we relate to experience, the way we conceive our experience, becomes reconditioned by our practice.
The first sense sphere that’s spoken of in the texts is seeing, sight: the eye as the instrument of sight, and the objects that are seen. Seeing is a process that happens between the eye and its object, and of course, the mind interprets what is seen. It recognizes the object if it has seen it before. It makes assumptions, often about its use or intention, and might begin to tell some stories about the object. The mind has the power, and it seems like it has the inclination quite often, to complicate the simple act of seeing. And it does that complication conditioned by all its past experience with that kind of object and what that kind of object has come to mean in our life. We know what a door is because we’ve been opening and closing doors since we were little kids. But the way the mind interprets what is seen, the mental activity that is triggered—that’s where we get caught, and that’s also where we can get free.
A door is a pretty neutral object for most of us, I imagine. But what about the idea of a tropical beach and warm blue water, palm trees with breezes wafting through? Are you getting a kind of a visual of that? For many, such a sight, maybe in a travel brochure, will trigger some kind of desire, some strong desire, maybe. And for others, that might just look like torture: hot sun, sand in your shorts, noisy people on the beach. How we relate to the sights that we see depends on what’s in the mind: old stories, memories, attitudes, current conditions—all those things condition how we see what we see. It’s not clear all the time.
I think it’s helpful to make a distinction between seeing and looking. This is something we talk about often; it’s really useful. As long as our eyes function, we’re going to see what is before us. But looking is a more intentional activity. There’s a focus on one thing, usually accompanied by some kind of curiosity or interest in the mind. Maybe there’s desire, maybe there’s aversion or fear. There’s cognitive complication involved in looking, whereas seeing, on the other hand, can be a simple, receptive process.
You might experiment right now. Just look intentionally at something, maybe the screen, maybe something else in the room. Look at it as if you want to know, “What is this, exactly?” with real curiosity. And notice what the mind is like, what the muscles in the face are like, especially around the eyes. I could feel my own eyes kind of squinting a little bit with that, even though I knew I was going to say that.
And now, just let go of that. Let go of the effort. Maybe close your eyes for a couple of seconds and just kind of reset. Now, opening your eyes again, just let your eyes receive what’s in front of them—maybe the screen again, maybe the room you’re in. Notice what it feels like in the eyes, in the muscles of the face, in the mind, to just receive the images rather than reaching out for them. Is there more calm in the seeing? Is there more ease? Moving from looking to seeing is a way of relaxing, of calming the mental interaction with what we see.
We want to notice what it is that creates attachment between the act of seeing and what is seen, because that is where our clear vision gets clouded, distorted. The things that arise when we’re looking instead of seeing—sometimes there’s some form of aversion, maybe some form of desire. I think doing this simple practice of switching between receptive seeing and actively looking can help us see. It can point to whether there’s something tying our seeing to what is seen that’s maybe something we want to look at, some way of relating to what’s happening that’s taking us in the direction of more stress, of less ease.
Of course, in our daily lives, we need to be looking actively quite often in order to navigate the world, in order to avoid bumping into things, using what we see to help us act skillfully. But noticing this difference, I think, can help us to become more sensitive to what it is that’s driving the looking.
I know a teacher who long ago gave a talk on sense restraint, and something that he said then has stuck with me ever since. He spoke about doing walking meditation on retreat and how his habit in his life at that time—he was a young man—had been to be on the lookout for attractive people, for the possibility of starting a romantic relationship. So he knew he was often driven by sensual desire. He described being determined to simply practice his walking meditation, and he felt this urge to look at the other people walking in the same area. He said to himself, “If I look, I will see.” Not meaning that he would see in that receptive way we just experimented with, but that he would see something he liked and be pulled into desire. He recognized that if he used his eyesight to look at the other people walking, that attachment, that hook, would arise. He would begin wanting something as a result of looking. And so he kept his vision lowered. He didn’t look at anyone in particular, just seeing his walking path, and as a result, his mind was able to stay calm.
In daily life, we aren’t likely to be so careful to avoid looking at what we know is going to give rise to unskillful reactions in the mind. But it’s something to think about. Looking at the newspaper or the news online, more likely for most of us, if we choose to open an article that we already have a sense is going to lead to becoming angry, upset, filled with hostility—do we really want to do that? We can’t always avoid seeing what might give rise to unwholesome reactions, but we can look at what the pull is, the hook that arises between seeing and what is seen in those moments.
Seeing is a really powerful way that we perceive and conceive of our world. Becoming aware of what arises in our minds and hearts when we see certain things—certain people, certain landscapes—aware of whether what arises serves us, leads us toward more peace, toward a more open heart, to a sense of beauty and connection, or in the opposite direction toward unhealthy desire, toward ill will, toward rage. Noticing that, seeing the difference. We can’t always control what we can hear or see or smell or feel, and we don’t want to ignore important things that are difficult to see. But we have agency in how we relate to the world that arises in our experience. Learning to be wise in the ways we relate to all our senses is a really big part of how we come to the end of the world of suffering.
Becoming wise about this is a really gradual process, of course. So tomorrow, I’ll talk about hearing, which is another way that we perceive and conceive of our world. In the meantime, I invite you to spend some time really attending to what it is that you see and noticing when you get hooked in some way in the looking. Maybe there’s just simple interest, curiosity, navigating the world, but notice the hooks that might be there: desires or aversions, judgments or comparisons that diminish your inner well-being, your clarity, that get your thinking going in a direction that doesn’t seem so healthy. It’s only through noticing the conditions that give rise to stress that we will eventually let go of what gives rise to stress.
With that, thank you for your attention, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Sangha: A Pali word meaning “community” or “assembly,” often referring to the community of Buddhist practitioners. ↩
Rohitasa: A figure from Buddhist cosmology, mentioned in the suttas, who was known for his incredible speed and attempted to walk to the end of the world. ↩
Deva: A Pali word for a divine or celestial being, often translated as “god” or “angel,” who inhabits realms of existence higher than the human one. ↩
Bhikkhu Bodhi: A prominent American Buddhist monk and scholar, known for his extensive translations of the Pali Canon into English. ↩
Loka: A Pali word meaning “world” or “cosmos.” In this context, it refers to the experienced world, not just the physical planet. ↩
Pali: The ancient Indo-Aryan language in which the earliest Buddhist scriptures, the Pali Canon, were composed. ↩
Ānanda: One of the Buddha’s principal disciples, his cousin, and his personal attendant for many years. He was renowned for his exceptional memory and recited many of the Buddha’s discourses after his passing. ↩
Dukkha: A fundamental concept in Buddhism, often translated from Pali as “suffering,” “stress,” “dissatisfaction,” or “unease.” ↩
Nāma-rūpa: A Pali term meaning “name-and-form.” It refers to the combination of mental (nāma) and physical (rūpa) phenomena that constitute a sentient being’s experience. ↩
Anicca: A Pali word for one of the three marks of existence, meaning “impermanence,” “inconstancy,” or “transience.” It points to the reality that all conditioned things are in a constant state of flux. ↩